Christmas Break

Today is the last day of my kids' Christmas break.   It has been great having some time off from everything.  Derek had some vacation time left so he was home too.  We were able to prep for Christmas, finish some projects on the house, and spend lots of time as a family.  We made it to temple square and saw the beautiful lights, even though it was freeeeeezing. 

On Christmas Eve we had a little family party at our house.  We had dinner and the kids made gingerbread houses. 

After the party it should have been easy to finish everything up.  I finished wrapping gifts after a couple of hours and everything was ready to go, but Chase wouldn't go to sleep.  We tried everything, including driving him around in the car on the icy roads.  He finally drifted off around 1:30 and we quickly finished up all our Christmas preparations and went to bed around 2:30.  He woke up at 3am screaming and continued screaming until 6am.  Thankfully Ethan and Julia slept in (the beauty of our Christmas break schedule I guess) and didn't make us come down until 10.  Chase slept until 11. 

Ethan and Julia opened presents without him, and he woke up cheerful and happy to open presents (even a few that weren't for him). 

That afternoon we went to my parents' house to share and open gifts, and we took brunch with us. 
That night my family came over for Christmas dinner.  Daphne and Chase were really cute playing together, and it was so fun seeing everyone.  . 

 

(I should have taken more pictures because I didn't quite get everyone.)

It was a great day, hope you all had a great Christmas too!

San Antonio

Earlier this month Derek had a business trip to San Antonio, Texas. We had some frequent flyer miles so I met him there for a quick trip.  It was just one night (I didn't dare leave Chase any longer) but it was so nice to have some time for just us.  We saw the Alamo: 

Inside the Alamo there were the most amazing trees with branches that twisted in every direction:

We walked along the riverwalk, had dinner at a little mexican restaurant, and rode on one of the boats that went up and down the river.  All the trees along the river had Christmas lights streaming down from the top, it was beautiful!

 

The alamo at night:

 

Us at the mall at the edge of the river:

Thanks to my mom who watched the kids while we were gone!

House #2

I finally got around to taking pictures of the rest of the house.  This first one is of the entry from our garage, our little mudroom area.  Derek put hooks up for our coats and jackets, key hooks and mail slots, and just added bulletin boards.  It has been so helpful!  Here it is with coats piled on all the hooks:

And moving upstairs, here is Chase's room:

Julia's room:

Ethan's room:

The kids' bathroom:

Our bedroom:

Our bathroom:

And my sister wanted to see our house decorated for Christmas, so here you go!  Our tree looks ridiculously tiny with the high ceilings in this room, maybe we'll find a bigger one next year. 

 

 

We are loving the house so far, but I still have a lot of decorating I'd love to do one of these days!

New house

I had a few people asking when I was going to post pictures of the new house, so I'm finally getting around to doing it!  Now I am not done decorating, organizing, or even unpacking.  But this is how everything looks at the moment.  When you walk in our front door we have a formal living room on the right (our piano room), and a formal dining room on the left.  And you can see straight into the family room which is at the back of the house.  Piano room:

Dining room:

Looking through the dining room from the entry near the garage, you can see our entryway and our piano room:

This is our family room from above, it is at the back of the house (and I just realized that there is an extra toy sitting on the mantel that is not usually there, so ignore the object on the far left):

Our kitchen, which is right next to the family room at the back of the house:

Looking from the kitchen into the family room:

(Sorry about the awful lighting on this one) Kitchen from opposite corner:

Back yard and fence which we just barely got finished a few weeks ago:

Main floor bathroom:

Derek's office/ guest room (definitely still needs some work!):

Well that's the main floor, minus the little entry by the back door which will be getting hooks for jackets and coats soon.  Our basement is unfinished, and I'll get pics of the upstairs soon.

Happy Halloween!

I promise I have not forgotten that I have a blog!  Moving was just overwhelming, and I just didnt know quite how to catch up.  But I'll try to post current stuff, and maybe go back and do highlights of the summer. 

This Halloween for the first time ever I had kids who all went with one theme!  I'm sure Ethan wouldn't wear something like this next year, so it will probably be the only time ever.  Introducing our Angry Birds!  Yes I did make the costumes, and if you looked closely I'm sure you'd be able to tell, but they look decent if you're a way off.  :)

 Halloween night is my sister Kristen's birthday.  Every year we do a birthday dinner for her, and this is the first year that we hosted it at our house.  (Wish I had pictures of everyone but I was a bit preoccupied.)  It was so much fun having everyone over. 

Our older kids went trick or treating with their friends right after dinner and gifts.  And Char and Andrew and I took Chase, Daphne, and Olivia out together not long after.  The kids were so cute.  Chase cheerfully said "see you later" as we left each house.  At one house after receiving his candy he just stood there and waited for more because he could see that there was plenty left, lol.  And my favorite moment of the night was when he heard someone's spooky Halloween sounds and asked if it was "Merry Christmas."  We told him that it was "Happy Halloween."  At the next house we visited he went up and said "Trick or treat, Halloween," and after getting his candy said "thank you, Halloween," and patted the man on the hand.  He was cracking me up all night!  Soon after we decided to walk up a hill to some houses, and he wanted to go down the hill.  He was not happy about it.  He had a huge meltdown and I ended up carrying him home, where the meltdown didn't stop.  Finally after throwing him in the bath he calmed down and we were able to finish off the evening happily. 
Overall it was a fun Halloween, and we had SO many more trick or treaters here than in our old neighborhood.  Check out the spooky moon coming over the mountain as we were out trick or treating:

Hope you all had a great Halloween too!

On Moving Out

Well, we're out! We finished getting everything moved out of the house last weekend, and we closed last Monday. We saw signs of the new people at our old house on Tuesday. So weird!!! We're living with my parents right now until our house is finished in August.

Moving with a 2 year old is an adventure, let me tell you! Chase was pulling stuff out of boxes almost as fast as we were getting them in. And packing glass kitchen items? Nightmare! Luckily he was due for a nap before anything actually got broken. I'm now sure how everything survived.

Julia enjoyed having picnics on the dining room floor after the table and chairs were moved out:

Here's the last pile of boxes ready to head to our storage unit:

Chase is obsessed with Toy Story right now, and he watched it several times while we got everything out of the house. This was our last day there:

And they have indeed broken ground on our new house. We drove over yesterday to check out the progress and saw not only the hole, but also the footings for the foundation! Those weren't supposed to be in until today so they're a couple days ahead of schedule, yay!!

 

 

This is the house that we are building. We looked and looked at houses for months, but never found anything that really worked for us. I found the floorplan for this house online and thought it would really be perfect for us, so in February we went up to Herriman to see the model home so see if it was as great in person as it looked on paper.   It was!   We continued looking at houses for a few weeks just to see if there was anything already built that was even close. There was nothing on the market that could compete, so we went for it!

So here we are 2 months later, moving out of our house.  We have lived in this house for over 14 years, and it's crazy how much stuff we have accumulated in that time.  Moving is THE WORST! I hate it, but I will be so excited when we finally get to move into our new house. They should be breaking ground on our new house within the next week and a half.  It should be done by the middle of August (crossing our fingers!) so in the meantime we will be moving in with my parents for the summer. I hope we don't drive them crazy!
And did I tell you that we met some of our new neighbors a few weeks ago?  I'm so glad that I will know somebody when we move in!!!